1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet recording apparatus and an ink jet recording method.
2. Description of the Related Art
When an image is formed by an ink jet system in which ink droplets are caused to fly toward a recording medium, a beading phenomenon occurs in which ink that has been already applied on the recording medium is pulled toward ink that is applied later. The ejected individual ink droplets are each referred to as a dot or a recording dot. A phenomenon in which an individual dot that has been already applied on the recording medium is drawn toward an individual dot that is subsequently applied thereon is referred to as micro-beading.
When micro-beading occurs, the image quality of a fine line or letter portion in the formed image substantially deteriorates, and the uniformity of a solid image portion substantially deteriorates. In order to suppress such deterioration in image quality, there is known a method of quickly increasing the viscosity of ink that has been applied on the recording medium by applying in advance, onto the recording medium, a reaction liquid for forming an ink image having an increased viscosity by coming into contact with a coloring material component in the ink.
Further, particularly in the commercial printing field, various types of recording media are used. When a wide variety of recording media are used, there is a problem in that unless a recording condition, such as a recording speed, temperature and humidity of the recording medium, type of ink, temperature of the ink, and application amount of the reaction liquid, is appropriately changed based on the type of the recording medium, micro-beading occurs to deteriorate image quality.
As an example of a method for solving such a problem, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-142206, a method is proposed in which a recording condition is selected by recording a test pattern prepared in advance on a recording medium and visually determining the image quality of the recorded test pattern.
However, when the method described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-142206 is used, the recording condition is set by visually determining the test pattern formed as an image on the recording medium. Hence, there is a problem in that a different determination may be made depending on the person performing the determination, so that an appropriate recording condition cannot be quantitatively set. Further, even if the person performing the determination is the same, differences in the determination can arise while repeating the cycle of forming the image, observing the image, performing the determination, and setting the recording condition.